A challenge facing question answering (QA) systems is the submission of vague questions. When a vague question is posed to a QA system, the QA system often makes mistakes and provides an incorrect answer. Question vagueness can occur for several reasons, such as the requestor failing to provide a context for the question. For example, if a requestor poses the question “What is the treatment for the disease?” the QA system is provided little context for the question. In addition, the term “the disease” appears to reference a previously discussed disease, but no reference is provided to the QA system in the question to resolve the missing reference. Current QA systems often attempt to solve such vague questions. In the example, the QA system might conclude that “the disease” refers to a most common disease, such as the common cold, and provide treatments for the common cold. However, the requestor might have been asking about a different disease, the treatment for which might be considerably different than the treatments found for the common cold.